March 22, 2007

On Monday, my mum, Amanda and I got up early and headed to the zoo with coffee, tea and warm scones. Early morning is the best time to go to the zoo because the animals are up and active (many are eating breakfast) and the zoo is really quiet.

We had a lovely morning visiting with our favoritepandas and very enthusiastic otters, as well as all the other Asia Trail residents. Of course it was nice visiting with mum and Amanda too.

Oh and we also walked down to visit the Gibbons. They were unusually quiet. I think because they were too busy eating.

March 18, 2007

So my Mum is in town visiting and yesterday I broke out the espresso machine and made everyone cappuccinos - YUM. It's always such a nice treat to have a strong Italian coffee. I think Mum and Grant liked them too.

After our lazy morning, we headed over to see James' new place. The apartment is very nice and spacious. It has 3 bedrooms and was recently renovated - a great find! It seems that he's getting really close to getting the new place so keep your fingers crossed.

Next was breakfast. We were all pretty hungry at this point so we headed to our old stomping ground and had a yummy breakfast at Tonic. We hadn't been there in a long time so everything, especially the maple butter, tasted really good.

From there we went for a drive to the dairy farm, South Mountain Creamery, where we get out dairy products . We thought it would be nice a drive, especially since it snowed the night before. The dairy was pretty with all the snow, but most of the cows were inside. We bought some cheese and yogurt and Grant got some ice cream, of course.

Our last stop took us to Frederick. Even though it was pretty cold, we walked around and did a little shopping. Frederick has a nice little downtown. There are many restaurants and a few specialty shops. There are also a couple Irish bars so there was lots of St. Patrick's Day celebrations happening both in the bars and out on the streets.

In the evening we went to see Purlie Victorious at my church. Purlie, the musical, opened on Broadway in 1970 to audiences thrilled to
see music and comedy used to expose the injustices of segregation. The performance was amazing, funny and touching. I highly recommend it, if you have time next weekend.

Today we went to church, where I was able to make some progress on my Everyday and then we had our traditional after service falafel sandwich - YUM!

March 13, 2007

So I made another batch of cupcakes this weekend. This time they were dark chocolate with buttercream frosting, which I made a deep lavender color. I've been hooked on cupcakes lately. I've subscribed to a few cupcakeblogs and been looking at some of the amazing cupcake photoson flickr and well, I'm hooked. Then coincidentally, Grant cut out and saved an article for me from the NY times, Strict Vegan Ethics, Frosted With Hedonism. So I'm digging the cupcake...they're a nice size, they can be individualized, they can be decorated as simply or as elaborately as you desire.

March 12, 2007

On Saturday, Amanda, Sarah, Amanda and I headed to Columbia to Build-a-Bear. It was Sarah's birthday and she suggested we go have some bear-making fun and we all jumped on board.

I had never been inside a build-a-bear store and I'm not sure I ever really wanted to before Saturday. It always seemed so loud, bright and a bit overwhelming (so many bears, clothes, kids, "happy" workers). However, having the support and laughs of my friends, made all the scary stuff disappear. Even the barbaric bear stuffing was less frightening once Amanda explained that the bear really liked getting the stuffing and that the metal pole just helped get stuffing in those hard to reach places.

Once our bears were stuffed and showered, we were ready to get them dressed. There were so many outfits to choose from...themed, cute, sporty and some that were frankly kind of slutty. I decided that I preferred a naked bear and went with a plan red shirt. Sarah dressed her bear as a Bear-eaucrat. Amanda H went with more of a simple, but cool bear with shades, and Amanda P dressed her bear in a pink bathrobe.

It was a great time (some might think too great for women our ages) and I hope a fun birthday for Sarah. I think she was especially pleased when the entire store stopped what they were doing to sing her birthday wishes.

March 05, 2007

My mum posted this picture on her flickr account of my Dad shoveling their driveway in Maine. Yeah, I don't miss that much snow. Though I do think it's so pretty and bright. I'm sure my Dad thinks otherwise. Mum, perhaps you can get Dad to leave a comment about what he thinks of the snow.

March 03, 2007

After a stressful week at work, I was able to sneak out early on Friday and bake a cake for Grant. The plan Grant knew was that we were suppose to meet up after work at a specified address and have a lovely dinner together. The plan I hoped would work, would be that I'd leave work early, come home, bake and frost cake, shower, get to the restaurant by 6:30, have a nice dinner, come home around 8:00 where a few friends would be waiting to surprise him. Let's see how it went...

I actually finished my proposal Thursday afternoon and was able to make first round changes Friday mid-morning. From there it went in for second round review and there was not much else I could do, so I was set for the day. I was able to leave early and thankfully Amanda had picked me up some last minute grocery items so I didn't have to take time to do that.

Grant has told me *many* times that he likes yellow cake with white frosting. To me this sounds incredibly unappealing, but it's his birthday so he gets what he likes. I did some searching and found a yellow cake recipe and a white frosting recipe and when I got home, I got to work. Some reviews for this cake said it tasted like cornbread, but many said it didn't, so I tried it. When done mixing, I tried the batter and it tasted good to me. Now the batter was done, cakes were cooking and I did some cleaning. Amanda came up and we tried my new Target brand swiffer thing - I liked the results and the floors are still shiny today (also the target version is more environmentally friendly as there is less waste and the cleaning product is natural.)

Ok, I'm rambling... the afternoon went on. The cakes cooled and we made frosting. This process was a bit touch and go as the recipe called for LOTS of confectioners sugar, and I had made some changes, and it was looking very thick, but in the end...we had frosting. I decided to put some lemon zest in the cupcake frosting because as I mentioned before, yellow cake with white frosting sounds blechy and I thought it would give the cupcakes some zing.

So Amanda and I frosted, time went by, it started getting late, Amanda helped with dishes. We finished up, Amanda headed home and I started getting ready. Now was the challenge of showering, but not looking like I had just showered or was too neatly put together as I was supposed to be coming from a long day at work. I decided Grant probably wouldn't notice that I smelled clean and fresh, or that I was a bit more dressed up for a Friday at work, but I concocted a story, just in case he asked.

I finished getting ready, had just enough time to jump in a cab and get to the restaurant. He called while I was in the cab to let me know he was there, I lied and told him I had just got off the bus and was walking over. I got to the restaurant, Vegetate, a place I had been wanting to try since it opened a couple years ago and a place I hoped Grant would appreciate. As vegetarians, it's not often you can go into a restaurant and order anything off the menu.

The atmosphere was quiet, low lighting, and modern/minimal decor. We started off in the lounge and each got a martini. Grant talked a bit about his day and then we headed to our table. They brought us some yummy crisp green beans in tall glass - fun, and I ordered a "small plate" of leek and arugula frittata with kale on the side, to start us off. We ordered a bottle of wine and for dinner I had pan seared gnocchi and more kale on the side, and Grant had a sweet potato, black bean and maybe polenta dish with collard greens and pomme frits. All of it was incredibly tasty. Grant wanted dessert and I tried to persuade him not to, saying we could get some ice cream at home, but my efforts failed and we shared a warm brownie with a coffee liqueur ice cream. It too was excellent (and I got to have some chocolate!)

Once done, we took a cab home. I was really tired and Grant is fighting a cold, so thankfully getting us home was not a problem. Once at our apartment building, Grant picked up the mail (I made sure not to do that earlier in the day) and thankfully there were a couple birthday cards in there to distract him as we went to our apartment. Behind Grant's back I secretly called Amanda's cell phone, but didn't say anything, I figured she get the message.

As we got to the door, I held back a bit, so that Grant would open the door. When he opened the door he was surprised that a number of lights were on but even more so, there was a woman sitting in our living room that we didn't know. Seconds later, Amanda and Sarah and Amanda and Peter jumped out and yelled, "surprise!" It was fantastic, and they were very clever to use Ruth (a friend visiting Amanda, who we've never met) as a puzzling distraction.

We all had a nice visit and Grant loved his cake. I explained the number of things that I had fibbed on, but confirmed that the major proposal work was actually real. I think he had a good birthday and a nice surprise.